This One's For the Girls.(International Edition)(Asian literature)

Byline: Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop

Asians embrace chick lit

The man who grace thinks is the One has finally given her The Ring! She is so blinded by love, she barely registers that he is moving overseas for work and hardly has time to talk to her--or that a leggy blonde appears in nearly all his photos. When Grace surprises him with a visit to Singapore, she suddenly finds herself on a furious chase to save her dream wedding, her sanity and her future children. The plot of Amazing Grace, by Tara FT Sering, bears all the hallmarks of a typical chick-lit novel: a young, fashionable heroine working in a big city; a desperate quest for love; a series of obstacles encountered and overcome. But this story does have one notable difference: it was written by an Asian author for an Asian audience, and the protagonist is Chinese-Filipino.

Over the past decade, chick lit has quickly become a pop-culture phenomenon and a commercial force at bookstores all over the globe. Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary (1996) and Candace Bushnell's Sex and the City (1997) were two of the most successful early chick-lit books, selling millions of copies, appearing in dozens of translations, spawning film and TV adaptations and turning their heroines into cult figures. More recently, Sophie Kinsella's Shopaholic series and Lauren Weisberger's The Devil Wears Prada--and the new Chasing Harry Winston--have also won over fans worldwide.

But while Anglo-American chick lit has inspired Latin American, Eastern European and Indian versions of the genre, Asian authors have been slower to embrace it. "There is a lot of interesting experimental writing coming out of China, but commercial chick lit doesn't really exist," says Marysia Juszczakiewicz, head of Literary Agency at Hong Kong's Creative Work, which publishes the Asia Literary Review. While many Asian female novelists have tackled romance and sex--Wei Hui in Shanghai Baby or Ayu Utami in Saman, for instance--they haven't really done so in the lighthearted, funny style associated with chick lit. "Western chick lit is about aspirations and relationships--and largely having it all," says Juszczakiewicz. "Chinese women's fiction is more about identity, and often set against a social and historical backdrop."

Now one regional publisher, Marshall Cavendish, is seeking to capitalize on that market gap with witty literature written for Asian women and set within the Asian socioeconomic milieu. Last November it released the first three novels in a series titled Asian Chic, featuring sassy heroines trying to balance work, family and love. The initial response was encouraging if not overwhelming, with each book selling about 2,000 copies in Singapore and Malaysia--modest compared with established titles like The Nanny Diaries.

This month the publisher is launching Keshara Young's The Love of Her Life, which follows the ...